Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

‘All the conchies?’

‘You know I don’t mean that.’

No, he thought. She was one of those who felt every death. She’d never learnt to read the casualty lists over breakfast and then go off and have a perfectly pleasant day, as the vast majority of civilians did. If she had learnt to do that, she mightn’t have been here. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘He could see I was getting upset and he says, “Why don’t we have a drink?” Well, money was a bit tight, you know, with feeding Tommy as well, but he says, “Don’t you worry, love, this one’s on me.” And he went into the scullery and came back with two bloody great big jugs, and off he went. Eeh, special brew. Well, you know me, Billy, two glasses of that, he was me long-lost brother, and I did, I talked , I played me mouth. I cussed Lloyd George, I cussed the King, I don’t know what bugger I didn’t cuss, but I was lonely , Billy. I’d had nobody to talk to except Tommy for months, and he was no company, poor little bugger, his nerves were gone. And of course at the trial it all got twisted. He said I kept dropping hints Lloyd George was going to die. I can remember exactly what I said. I says, “That bloody, buggering bastard Lloyd George, he’s got a head on him like a forty-shilling pisspot, but you mark my words he’ll come to rue.” There. That was it. That was the death threat.’ She shook her head. ‘It was nowt of the sort. Anyway we were half way down the second jug — or I was — and he says, “Can I trust you?” I says, “Well, you’re in a pretty pickle if you can’t.” And then he starts telling me about this detention centre where the regime was very bad. Worse than Wandsworth. And you know all the stuff he was telling me was stuff I’d told him , about being naked in the cells and all that, but I was too daft to see it. And then he says, him and some of his mates had found a way to get the lads out. They had a contact inside the centre, one of the guards it was supposed to be. But, he says, the problem was the dogs. They had these dogs patrolling the perimeter fence. I says, “Well, poison. ” He says, well, yes, but there was a problem about that. It had to look like an outside job because of the guard. You see, they didn’t want the detention centre to twig about him . So I says, “Curare.”’

‘Fired through the fence in a blowdart?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fired at the dogs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course,’ Prior said, ‘you do realize, don’t you, a lot of people wouldn’t know about curare?’

For the first time she looked uneasy. ‘Yes, well, I read about it in a book on South America, and then I happened to mention it to Alf — our Winnie’s husband — and he says, “Oh, yes, we’ve got some of that in the lab.” That’s the only way I knew about it.’

‘No previous thoughts of killing Lloyd George? They said at the trial you’d plotted to kill him before, when you were in the suffragettes.’

‘The suffragettes never threatened human life. That was a point of honour: property, not life. It just shows Spragge’s ignorance, does that. Couldn’t even think up a convincing lie.’

‘He seems to have convinced the jury.’

‘You know what was going on there as well as I do. You put a pacifist — any pacifist — in the dock — could be Jesus Christ — and the biggest rogue unhung in the witness-box, and who do you think they’re gunna believe?’

‘What did he say when you mentioned curare?’

‘He says, yes, but how on earth was he going to get his hands on that? I says I knew where to get it, but it was too risky. And then he says if I helped him, he’d help me. He’d get little Tommy across to Ireland, and that clinched it for me, because you know Tommy was getting really weird. I mean, to be honest, I thought if I didn’t get him out I was gunna have a loony on me hands, like Lily Braithwaite’s husband. You know what a state he was in when he come back.’

‘So you agreed to get the curare?’

‘Yes, he give me an address and told me to write to him when I got it. I wrote to our Winnie’s Alf, and he mentioned dogs in his letter back to me, but that letter was never produced, I think it slipped down a crack in the pavement. And Alf said, yes, he’d get it. He works in a big medical laboratory, and he had to sign for the poison. But he wasn’t worried, see, because the dogs’d be dying at the other end of the country and nobody would make the connection. But can you imagine him signing his name like that if he’d thought it was for Lloyd George?’

‘Then what?’

‘I waited. The post seemed to take such a long time, but of course unbeknownst to us all the letters were being opened. The parcel was opened. And then when it was finally delivered the police were on the doorstep in a matter of minutes. And I was charged with conspiracy to murder Lloyd George, and others . That’s the other thing they dropped. It wasn’t just Lloyd George they were on about. To begin with it was hundreds of people I was supposed to be plotting to kill. And, of course, all I could say was; “The poison was for the dogs,” but I couldn’t prove it, it was Spragge’s word against mine, and he was working for the bloody Ministry of Munitions. Oh, and the trial. You know he read all the letters out in court?’

‘Smith did?’

‘Yeh, Smith. The Attorney-General. Oh, I was honoured, they wheeled out all the big guns. And he read me letters out in court, about Winnie’s period being late and all that. And you know he read the words the way I’d wrote them. Just to get a laugh out of me, because I can’t spell, I never have been able to. But I wonder how good his spelling’d be, if he’d left school when he was eight?’

‘He shouldn’t’ve done that.’

‘I was fair game. Language too. He couldn’t get over the language, this dreadful, coarse, lewd, vulgar, low woman who kept using all these words his dear little wifie didn’t even know. I’ll bet.’

Prior sat back against the wall. He was finding the eye in the door difficult to cope with. Facing it was intolerable, because you could never be sure if there were a human eye at the centre of the painted eye. Sitting with his back to it was worse, since there’s nothing more alarming than being watched from behind. And when he sat sideways, he had the irritating impression of somebody perpetually trying to attract his attention. It tired him, and if it tired him after less than an hour, what must it have done to Beattie, who’d had to endure it for over a year? He noticed that the latrine bucket had been placed where it could be seen from the door. ‘Why’s the bucket there?’ he asked.

‘Because some poor bloody cow drowned herself in her own piss.’

‘My God.’ He stared at her. ‘You’re not as bad as that, are you?’

‘No, I keep going. Trouble is, you’re punished if you go on hunger strike, so I can’t have any visitors. I haven’t seen our Hettie for… oh, I don’t know, it must be two months.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘That’s what Spragge said. When I told him about not being able to get Tommy across to Ireland, he says, “I’ll see what I can do.”’

‘The difference is I’m not asking for anything back.’

She touched his sleeve. ‘We were close once, Billy. You were like a son to me.’ She waited. ‘I’m not going to ask whose side you’re on because you mightn’t tell me the truth, and if you did, I wouldn’t believe you. But just tell me this. Do you know whose side you’re on?’

He looked at her and smiled, but didn’t reply.